Oman com­pletes WTE fea­si­bil­ity study

OPWP is giv­ing a big push to re­new­able en­ergy in the coun­try with WTE plans

Oman Power and Wa­ter Pro­cure­ment Com­pany (OPWP), the sole pro­curer of elec­tric­ity and wa­ter in Oman, has com­pleted the fea­si­bil­ity study for the first waste-to-power project and is likely to start ten­der­ing process in early 2019.

“We have com­pleted the fea­si­bil­ity study for the waste-topower project, and cur­rently study­ing var­i­ous op­tions. If ev­ery­thing goes ac­cord­ing to the plan, most likely we will be is­su­ing pro­cure­ment or­ders through ten­ders in early 2019,” said Eng Naif Ali al Abri, projects de­vel­op­ment di­rec­tor at OPWP.

He ex­plained that they have sub­mit­ted the pro­posal for the ap­proval of the Author­ity for Elec­tric­ity. Once the ap­proval is ob­tained, they will move fast on this project.

OPWP is giv­ing a big push to re­new­able en­ergy in the coun­try as it plans to gen­er­ate around 12-13% of the to­tal elec­tric­ity from re­new­able sources, and for that it plans to is­sue ten­ders for In­de­pen­dent Power Proj- ects (IPP) based on re­new­able en­ergy on an­nual ba­sis for next seven years. Most of these projects would use so­lar en­ergy fol­lowed by wind power for some projects.

“Be­sides so­lar and wind en­ergy projects, there will be one project based on en­ergy gen­er­ated from waste. This waste-to-en­ergy project will be taken in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Oman En­vi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices Hold­ing Com­pany, also known as Be’ah,” said Al Abri.

Oman’s first WTE IPP is in line with Oman’s vi­sion to di­ver­sify fuel sources for power gen­er­a­tion, in ad­di­tion to sup­port­ing the re­duc­tion of waste vol­ume and de­mand for land­fills.